The family

When I was 19 I came into some money that my grandma had left me - only £1,000, but it felt like a fortune. Before spending most of it on clothes and partying, I decided I should do something that might make her proud.

So the first thing I did was buy a Fender acoustic guitar for £150 and a beautiful dark-wood ukulele for about £30, with the idea that I would teach myself to play them. Since then I've fumbled my way from Billy Bragg to Bonnie "Prince" Billy on the guitar, but the ukulele has languished in an old violin case, tucked away in cupboards, unloved and unused ... until this summer when Noah and the Whale came along.

My son, Barney, is 13 and pretty hip for his age - a floppy-fringed indie kid. Coincidentally, he discovered the folk-rock band Noah and The Whale's ukulele-driven hit 5 Years Time, just when I had decided to dust down the neglected uke and have another try.

Playing music is not part of my family's tradition - we're talkers, not players - and Barney has never shown the slightest interest in learning any musical instrument, so I was pleasantly surprised (OK, astounded) when he said he would like to give the ukulele a go.

The training

There are many fantastic things about ukuleles: they are small and pretty, they have only got four strings, they are easy for little fingers to play, they make a lovely soft sound, and top of the list is that they are cheap to buy - a couple of beginners' models cost me less than £26.

The kids were charmed by them - they picked them up and started strumming immediately.

Another fantastic ukulele thing is that there are loads and loads of online resources to help you learn to play. To get started, a quick search led us to an online ukulele tuner at get-tuned.com/ukulele_tuner.php - no messing with pitch pipes or tuning forks, just press the button, get a note and twiddle the tuning knob until the sounds match.

The thing that has always put Barney off learning an instrument is that he wants to learn songs not notes. As any self-taught guitarist will know, you don't need to read music, you only need to learn the chords - and once you've mastered changing between A, B, C, D, E, F and G, the rest is just embellishment and technique.

So we decide to learn the chords for 5 Years Time. Again, the internet immediately came up with the goods: a discussion forum on ukulelehunt.com told us to play C-F-G-F all the way through, alligatorboogaloo.com/uke/chords gave us the chord charts (simple diagrams telling you which strings to press, where to press them, and with which fingers), a quick look at the 5 Years Time video on YouTube and we'd got the tune and rhythm nailed.

The practising part, well that's taken us a little longer.

Going solo

Sitting together in the living room, we started by practising an even strum, up and down - no chords, just stroking the strings with a rhythm. Then we threw in some chords. It's fiddly at first. Ruby struggled for a while to press her fingers down in the right places - "You forget where they are meant to go," she says - and the chord changes are awkward until your fingers learn the movement between the shapes. That said, I haven't had to push them to persevere: "It's much easier to learn than I thought it would be," says Barn.

The kids stay with me on Wednesdays and every other weekend, so our practice is limited to those times, but we've got into a routine of spending 15 or 20 minutes on those days, working toward our goal of playing 5 Years Time together. It's been great to do something together that doesn't involve the TV, broadband or shopping. In the past, attempts at boardgames have dissolved into sniping and competitive wrangles between the kids, but playing the ukulele together brings some harmony between them.

Perhaps the most satisfying moments for me have come when I've heard them playing at unexpected times. Barney has started keeping his uke by his side and taking the occasional screen break to play; and Ruby wanders around the house absent-mindedly strumming.

As for me, I'm a ukulele convert. 5 Years Time is in the bag and I can now play Talking Heads' Psycho Killer, New Order's Love Vigilantes, various Buddy Holly numbers, Wimoweh and most of Hakuna Matata from The Lion King. Top 10 novelty hit all over Europe? Maybe not, but the ukulele's out of the closet and I think Grandma Stephenson would be proud.